Value proposition

A public-private foundation for open source, vendor-neutral, privacy-forward sustainable urban mobility data tools.

The Open Mobility Foundation is a public-private partnership for open source, vendor-neutral, privacy-forward and sustainable urban mobility data tools.

OMF was launched by member cities, tech sector and NGO members to develop code and tools, starting with a contribution by the City of Los Angeles of their open source code base for a data platform called the “Mobility Data Specification” (MDS). MDS is comprised of a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and code projects that enable standard communications between cities and users of the public right-of-way (i.e. e-scooter companies or city-run bus services) to improve safety and protect residents. Now used by over 50 cities, MDS was originally developed by LA's Department of Transportation to help manage dockless micro-mobility programs (including shared dockless e-scooters).

Starting from the MDS work, the projects developed by OMF will:

• Put municipalities in the center of mobility data management, as the owners of public right of way, and the parties most directly responsible to the public for their safety, privacy and mobility opportunities.

• Deliver one or more sets of interoperable, reusable microservices, using vendor-neutral, open standardized APIs and widely re-usable common data models.

• Respect the prime importance of privacy and security for urban mobility data, and the varying needs of diverse jurisdictions and populations.

• Issue its own code as reference implementations under open source licenses to permit the broadest possible implementation and adaptation.

transportation, urban mobility, civic data analytics, privacy, open source, e-scooters, IoT, geolocation, civic tech, data standards, digital infrastructure, and autonomous vehicles